New Movescount Features!

The Movescount Development Team has announced their latest upgrades and newest features to the Suunto powered Sports Community Website.

We’re happy to introduce the training program planner, the long-awaited revolutionary tool for every sportsperson! It’s a tool for creating training programs for the coming weeks while sharing them with other keen sportspeople.

Whether you’re training for a marathon run or to lose those extra five pounds, the training programs will help you to train more effectively and reach your targets. After planning your training, you can see your weekly totals, intensity distribution along with the plan itself.

The coolest thing about the training program planner is that you can now share your training programs with other Movescount members. It works just like routes: when you create a training program, you can choose to make it public so that all Movescount members can see it and start using it. As more and more people share their training programs, we’ll soon have a pool of hundreds, even thousands of training programs to choose from. The training programs can be rated and discussed, ultimately making it easier to find the training program that suits you best.

Other new features

Improved user search – Summary of heart rate zones – Editing several Moves at once – Follow us on Twitter!

Searching for members

You can now search for members by their username. When you are in the map view and type in a search term, all the members with that name in that area (for example in Finland or in Europe) are shown on the map. If you select the list view, you will get the global results.

New summary views for heart rate zones

The summary now shows a new value, the time spent in heart rate zones. For example, you can select all your cycling Moves or all the Moves from the past week, and see how much time you have spent on each heart rate zone. This helps you to understand how much time you have spent on various effort levels – and adjust your training accordingly.

Possibility to edit several Moves at the time

Now you can modify several Moves at the same time. This is particularly handy when you upload data (i.e. several Moves) from your device to Movescount. You can now easily add routes, tags, activity, vibes and notes to all of them at once. You can find this on the summary page when pressing Edit.

We hope you enjoy the benefits of these new features and keep movin’!

Full Throttle Endurance Racing Dominates the Triathlon Weekend

It was a big weekend for Suunto-sponsored Twinlab-Full Throttle Endurance Racing with as they dominated two big races this weekend. From the press release:

New Jersey, August 14, 2010- Twinlab-Full Throttle Endurance Racing (FTE) dominated at the Long Branch Triathlon on Sat. Bill Kelly ran away from the field after he took the lead early in the bike leg on his Jamis T2 of the Olympic Race. Anna Hillegass took the top prize in the womens race for her first Overall Title. The Team also had the many other podium finishes spanning a wide range of categories. In the Sprint Race the podiums kept coming with new comers Tom Saito and Julie Aiello winning the Overall Titles. The podiums didn't stop there as FTE had 3rd and 4th Overall finishers as well, with Dan Ownes and Benji Aiello winning their Age groups.

New York, August 15, 2010- Twinlab-Full Throttle Endurance Racing (FTE) also raced in the Harryman Triathlon on Sun. Rick Krupa was certainly the class of the field winning the Overall Title by 4 minutes. Joe Marinucci also had a solid day winning the 34-39 age group title. The Team also had other podium finishes.

"It was a great weekend of racing for the Full Throttle Team", said Head Coach Scott Berlinger, "we are getting ready for what we hope will be a 4th consecutive USA Triathlon Team National Championship in Myrtle beach, SC on Oct 2nd. "

Congratulations on an amazing weekend!

For more on Full Throttle Endurance Racing go to their website.

Rebecca Rusch WINS and Sets New Course Record at Leadville

YEAH REBA!!!!!

Suunto's Rebecca Rusch, the 2009 Leadville Trail 100 Women’s Champ and three-time 24 Hour Solo Mountain Biking World Champion, has done it again. This weekend Rebecca not only defended her 2009 Leadville Trail 100 title, to become the 2010 Life Time Fitness Leadville Trail 100 Women's Champ, but she also smashed the course record set back in 1997. She beat her 2009 time by nearly 30 minutes and broke the course record by 11 minutes to finish the grueling 100-mile race with a time of 7:45:35. She finished 22 overall in a field of 1022 finishers. From the press release:

After a chilly morning start, Rusch says the blue-bird skies and temperatures in the high 60s to low 70s were a stark change over last year’s freezing conditions.

She spent most of the first half of the race trying to shake second place finisher Amanda Carey. Rusch finally gained a sizeable gap at the Columbine climb.

“I said it’s now or never,” said Rusch, “I just knew it had to happen then. And I put the screws to her and it worked.”

Rush battled through leg cramps during the last stretch of the race to cross the finish line 25 minutes before Carey and an hour before the 3^rd & 4^th place female finishers.

“Another win at Leadville is huge. This race is unreal,” said Rusch, “I’ve been training with this being my main goal all year. Still, I surprised myself. I wanted the course record, but I didn’t expect to beat it by 11 minutes. This was the most painful day I had on a bike, but it was worth it.”

The Life Time Fitness Leadville Trail 100 is one of the most high-profile mountain bike races in the sport, as well as one of the most punishing, with steep climbs and harrowing descents totaling approximately 14,000 feet in elevation gain. This year the race had more than 1,500 riders from 48 states and 21 countries. The race covers 100 miles of peaks and valleys all above 9,000 feet in elevation in Leadville, CO. It draws some of the top names in the sport, and at least 20,000 spectators. The race is an out-and-back course; 50 miles to the highest paint on the course, the Columbine Mine Aid Station at 12,600’. 90-percent of the race is on back-country dirt roads, with some short sections of paved road.

Congratulations to Rebecca on an amazing accomplishment. Reba uses a Suunto t6c for all of training, and she uploads her race reports, routes, accomplishments, and training data at www.movescount.com. So see how many calories she burned during Leadville, her heart rate, her mileage and route, check out her movescount profile here. http://www.movescount.com/members/rebarusch

For more on Rebecca Rusch visit her website.

Photos by Dave McElwaine and Rob O'Dea

Andy Potts Wins Ironman Boulder 70.3

Photo above by Rich Cruse.

Fresh off his win at Ironman Cor d’Alene, Sunnto-sponsored Andy Potts repeated his victory at the Ironman Boulder 70.3 with a winning time of 3:46:50.

Andy dominated the field with a one minute lead coming out of the water. He slipped twelve seconds behind Steven Hackett as he finished the second transition but made up that time with an impressive 1:16 half marathon securing his victory.

Andy wears the Suunto td6 black flame.

To follow Andy go to his website.

For more great action shots, check out photography by Rich Cruse.

Kim Havell Heads to Tibet

We are very excited about the upcoming trip to Tibet for Suunto althlete Kim Havell. Kim is an experienced mountaineer and alpine skier based out of Telluride, CO. Armed with her trusty Suunto Lumi altimeter, barometer compass, she along with nine others will be attempting to climb the North face of Shishapangma followed by an attempt of the First Decent of the Swiss/Polish route. More information from the statement by Kim's team:

As the 14th highest mountain in the world, Shishapangma soars above the grassy plains of far Eastern Tibet, within the Chinese territory. Our ultimate objective, the Swiss- Polish route, has been sought out once before as a ski descent by a highly accomplished team sponsored by The North Face in 1999. This was an expedition that resulted in the tragic death of two of its members- Alex Lowe and David Bridges when an avalanche ripped down the 2,200 meter couloir. Since that time, no skier or snowboader has attempted to descend the intimidating South face of Shishapangma.

Though Shishapangma has been dubbed as one of the “easy” 8,000 meter peaks, along with Cho-Oyu and Gasherbrum II, there is nothing easy about climbing and skiing any mountain 8000 meters above sea level. Since Shishapangma’s first ascent by a Chinese team in 1964, twenty two people have perished on its slopes. Further statistics show, the numbers of mountaineers that are turned away each year from a successful summit bid are staggering. As both climbers and skiers, our group will deal with continuous obstacles in the form of altitude, weather, possible sickness, teamwork, decision making, transporting the many extra loads and coordinating logistics in order to get the entire team, and our ski gear, to the top of this mountain..twice!

Our team is unique in its strength as individuals. Each member of this team has spent years guiding, climbing and training. It has been a journey of learning about the beauty, the perils, and the soul behind the heights and challenges that call our names. As each of our resumes reflect, we are all mountaineers who have a deep passion for skiing and climbing, a passion that has taken us around the world to confront and accomplish or goals. Together as a team we are comprised of males and female, skiers and snowboarder, photographer, writers and videographers, guides, instructors, and SAR volunteers. We in our deepest essence exist for the rare opportunity for the true pursuit of the unknown as we test ourselves within untouched realms of possibility.

In our objective, we have chosen to acclimatize during a climb and ski of the normal“Northern” route, enabling us to assess conditions, track weather patterns and prepare forthe goal; To make an alpine style ascent of the Swiss/Polish couloir route on Shishapangma’s Southwest face followed by a first descent of the same route. Thistechnically demanding descent on a 50-degree slope, following one of the most aestheticlines imaginable. The Swiss/Polish route, in the words of the great Alex Lowe “is the most aesthetic line of any 8,000 meter peak”

With a rare combination of skill in climbing and skiing, rescue training and guiding, medical and rigging training, all within the nature of our professional make-up, we will present insight and personal perspective into the critical elements behind this exhilarating and dangerous journey. This ambitious mountain endeavor will reveal a story or our backgrounds, relationships, and cultural interactions. This story of personal exploration and world’s first will take our readers down the long road we shall have traveled to be the first to ski/snowboard this most alluring ski line at the extreme heights of our planet.

You can follow Kim as she makes her way to Tibet on her website here. She will also be contributing to the Outside Television and Elevation Outdoors blogs.